What's Hot: Small and easy to carry, fast charging, outputs high power.

What's Not: None.

mophie is known for making battery packs and cases for iPhone and iPod products. With iPad 2 and other tablets getting more and more popular, mophie now offers the Juice Pack Powerstation, a high density battery brick that's smaller than an iPhone 4S but packs 4000 mAh fast charging battery power. The Juice Pack Powerstation outputs up to 2.1 amps which means it can not only charge phones, MP3 players like Juice Pack sleeves can handle, but also it’s powerful enough to charge tablets that usually require over 1 amp output power. The Juice Pack Powerstation works with a large selection of phones and tablets in addition to the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

Design

The mophie juice pack powerstation is quite small for a battery pack that has 4000 mAh capacity. It measures 2.28 x 4.09 x 0.53 inches and weights 4.6 ounces. The rectangular battery brick has a soft touch surface with silver brushed metal band covering the sides. The powerstation has an ultra clean design with only one control button on the side to start charging or check power level. The Juice Pack Powerstation has four subtle LED lights indicating the battery’s power level. It comes with two ports: one USB port for power output and a micro USB input port. The battery comes with a USB-MicroUSB cable for charging the Juice Pack Powerstation.

Features

One of the most useful features on the Juice Pack Powerstation is the output power. The battery can switch from outputting 500mAp to 1Amp, and to 2.1Amp, making it compatible with virtually any phone, MP3 player and tablet on the market. So if you need to top off your phone and tablet while traveling, you can just bring one battery pack to take care of both. The higher output also means it charges your device faster. The mophie juice pack powerstation filled an iPhone 4S battery within an hour in our tests; and charged an iPad 2 from 50% to full within an hour as well. With juice pack battery at full, it charged the iPhone 4S twice from almost 0% power to full, and charged the iPad 2 1 and ˝ times from almost 0% to full.

You can charge the mophie juice pack powerstation using the included USB/MicroUSB cable via either a computer or an AC adapter for your mobile device. The battery pack charges reasonably fast via USB and faster via AC adapter. Mophie claims you should use “Made for Apple” AC adapter, but we tested with other AC chargers and they worked fine. Since the battery pack works with BlackBerry smartphone and Android smartphones, most of the AC chargers for these phones can charge the battery. You can check the power level by pressing the side button with a battery symbol on it, and remember, you can’t use the battery pack to charge anything while it’s being charged.

As with most Mophie battery products, the Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation has built-in safety measures including short circuit protection, overcharge and temperature protection. The battery has 500 full charging cycles, which means it only counts a full charging cycle and adds up partial charges until they count to full cycles. So you can top up your devices without worrying about using up necessary charging cycles.

Conclusion

The mophie juice pack powerstation is an ideal battery pack for those who take multiple mobile devices with them on the road. It has the output power to charge just about anything including tablets, and outputs via USB which is compatible with most mobile devices. The battery pack is small and easy to carry, and the LED lights are convenient for checking power levels. The battery pack goes to sleep when not being used and has a very good standby time.